The English Department's "Notable Writers of Color" poster, on display in the English Advising Office, depicts 52 authors who have been taught at least once in English Department courses. These authors were selected from the list of 127 names below. This list was culled from course descriptions spanning a few years in the late 1990s. Names with links are those that appear on the poster; the links take you to pages on those individual authors.
For more information about studying writers of color at the UW Department of English, see our "Short Guide to Studying Writers of Color."
| Chinua Achebe | Meena Alexander | Sherman Alexie |
| Agha Shahid Ali | Peter Bacho | James Baldwin |
| Amiri Baraka | Paul Beatty | Betty Louise Bell |
| Arna Bontemps | Gwendolyn Brooks | Carlos Bulosan |
| Octavia Butler | LLan Cao | Xam Wilson Cartier |
| Ana Castillo | G. S. Chandra | Diana Chang |
| Charles Chesnutt | Frank Chin | Louis Chu |
| Sandra Cisneros | Eldridge Cleaver | Michelle Cliff |
| Lucille Clifton | Anna J. Cooper | Harold Cruse |
| Edwidge Danticat | Samuel Delany | Vine Deloria |
| Anita Desai | Frederick Douglass | W. E. B. Du Bois |
| Paul Laurence Dunbar | Ralph Ellison | Olaudah Equiano |
| Louise Erdrich | Sui Sin Far | Jessie Fauset |
| Heinz Insu Fenkl | Gabriel Garcia-Marquez | Amitav Ghosh |
| Jessica Hagedorn | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | Lely Hayslip |
| Essex Hemphill | Chester Himes | Linda Hogan |
| John Dominis Holt | Pauline Hopkins | Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston |
| Langston Hughes | Keri Hulme | Zora Neale Hurston |
| David Henry Hwang | Kazuo Ishiguro | Harriet Jacobs |
| Gish Jen | Charles Johnson | James Weldon Johnson |
| Gayle Jones | Younghill Kang | Elizabeth Keckley |
| Nora Keller | Randall Kenan | Adrienne Kennedy |
| Patti Kim | Jamaica Kincaid | Maxine Hong Kingston |
| Joy Kogawa | Hanif Kureishi | Nella Larsen |
| S. K. Y. Lee | Alain Locke | Audre Lorde |
| Darrell H. Y. Lum | Wing Tek Lum | Nathaniel Mackey |
| Dambudzo Marechera | Paule Marshall | James McBride |
| Claude McKay | Anchee Min | Rohinton Mistry |
| Kazuo Miyamoto | Toshio Mori | Toni Morrison |
| Walter Mosley | Bharati Mukherjee | David Mura |
| Milton Murayama | V. S. Naipaul | Gloria Naylor |
| Jill Nelson | Fay Myenne Ng | John Okada |
| Gary Pak | Ann Petry | Caryl Phillips |
| Ishmael Reed | Richard Rodriguez | Arundhati Roy |
| Salman Rushdie | Bienvenido N. Santos | Danzy Senna |
| Leslie Marmon Silko | Monica Itoi Sone | Cathy Song |
| Sara Suleri | Wallace Thurman | Jean Toomer |
| Ngugi wa Thiong'o | Sojourner Truth | Derek Walcott |
| Alice Walker | David Walker | Velma Wallis |
| Booker T. Washington | James Welch | John Edgar Wideman |
| Harriet Wilson | Shawn Wong | Richard Wright |
| Hisaye Yamamoto | Wakako Yamauchi | John Yau |
| Zitkala-Sa |
